Pyrrhic Victory
by MassEffectMaster
Summary: A look at the different endings of Mass Effect 3 gone wrong through different perspectives.


So I had an idea for how terrible things would get if the endings were taken through a cynic's view. By the way, if you're overly sensitive about religion the synthesis portion may or may not be a bit too much for you, not my intention but that's kind of how it came out.

In order, the plots are:

Destroy

Control

Synthesis

Indoctrination Theory Gone Wrong

Enjoy and review!

* * *

Destroy:

Tali woke up from her unconsciousness and found her faceplate cracked. "KEELAH!" She immediately began scrambling for a med-kit, but was jolted from the activity by Garrus's hand on her arm, "You need to see this Tali!"

"No, I need to get a med-kit and sterilize my wounds, I-"

"Now!"

Garrus all but dragged the quarian to the airlock, "Garrus I can't be exposed to the outside! I need to cleanse infections and I need to... to..." The doors of the airlock sprung open, revealing the vast paradise before them. Tali simply said, "Wow..."

"I know. We're fucked."

"What?"

"Think about it! Either the food here is dextro or levo, either you and me or the rest of the crew will all starve!"

"I... you're right. We need to test it somehow. Where's EDI?"

Garrus's solemn face turned even darker and Tali finally stood to follow him to the cockpit. EDI's corpse was laid out on the floor, Joker was holding her and whispering things into her 'ears'. Her eyes were dark, her orange visor gone. She was defunct. Joker turned his focus to the quarian, "You can fix her right? Tali, please help her, I think she was powered down or turned off or something and all you have to do is turn her back on, right?" The pleading look in his eyes were enough to melt anyone's heart.

"Sure, I just have to... just give me a while to check everything out around here and I'll fix her, okay Joker?"

Between sobs Joker moaned out, "Okay... okay..."

The dextro duo proceeded down the hallway and went down the elevator, finding it to be active despite EDI's lack of functionality. How things had led up to here was a haze, but they remembered everyone coming back onto the ship through the hanger, then trying to return to their stations. That would mean Liara and Ashley would be on the third floor.

As they exited the elevator, they could see most of the doors malfunctioning, the only ones that weren't opening and closing randomly were the doors that had been smashed out of the doorways by the crash. Ashley was wedged in between one of the doors that was trying to close shut, the one to one of the observation lounges. Unable to turn her head enough to look at the elevator, she stopped struggling, "Hello? Is someone there?"

Tali looked at Garrus before responding, "Yes, it's me and Garrus."

"Oh thank god! I'm trapped, could you help me?"

Tali examined the door carefully, "If I can get power running to this area I can manage to get the door to open properly and then-"

Garrus grabbed the door with both hands and began to pull it open, just enough so that Ashley could wiggle out. Then he let it slam shut and popped his neck, "Why am I always the one doing the heavy lifting?"

Liara appeared from her room and walked over, "Because Shepard is-hey where is Shepard anyway?"

Tali started frantically looking around, "Yeah, where is he?"

Garrus raised an eyebrow and stared at Tali, "You don't remember?"

"Remember what?"

Garrus's face darkened and he was barely able to meet Tali's eye-line, despite this being the first time he had seen her face. Her skin was a pale translucent silver. Her eyes were a similar shade, and even more beautiful. He was ashamed to even think that he found his best friend's girlfriend beautiful, and then he remembered the reason he couldn't look her in the eye. "He stayed behind on Earth to detonate the Crucible. Tali I know that you and Shepard..."

He couldn't even finish the sentence before Tali backed up into the wall and slunk to the floor, putting her head in her hands and sobbing. "He promised he'd come back to me!"

Garrus crouched down and tried to comfort her. She just swatted him away angrily and Turning to Liara and Ashley he murmured, "Maybe you could check on the others?"

They nodded and got in the elevator.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xx

In contrast to what they had believed when they crashed, the planet wasn't levo-based. Garrus and Tali weren't going to be the sole deceased. They would be the only survivors, if any made it at all. The fuel cells for her food purification unit had been retrieved from the Normandy's AI Core. EDI wasn't going to be using it any more. On the second day Tali had checked on Joker. He was slumped over EDI with a pistol in his hand. First were the crewmen, they started dropping like flies. While Tali gathered food, Garrus spent his days digging unceremonious graves for the dead.

Joker and EDI were the first to go. Javik went after that, for all his talk of how he would outlast primitives, in the end, when he was with Liara, he was just glad he wouldn't have to be witness to more death. Ashley went next, she took a bottle of whiskey and a book of poems, went to her observations room and read until they found her in the morning. James, Cortez, and a couple of other similar-minded crew members got a pistol and a bullet and began playing something called 'rushing roulette' or something like that. It was just like them to go out on their own terms. Asari could survive longer than humans without food, and so Liara was the last person alive besides the dextros. In her last days she taught Garrus and Tali how to use her information feeds to try and send out beacons. Then she had a long talk with them about Shepard, the man they had all missed. His cabin was untouched, no one dared to check it except for Tali, who spent her nights there. They all dozed off after a while. One of them never woke up again.

Grave-digging wasn't exactly the most productive thing, but Garrus and Tali knew that if the odds weren't in their favor then the crew would have done this for them. So they kept going.

They began to live in earnest. After a few years, Tali's immune system even began to cope, the conditions of the planet were more bountiful in gifts than the events that had transpired there would indicate.

Eventually time passed, and they moved on, past Shepard and focusing on how they were the only people keeping each other sane. As they grew more comfortable Tali learned to love the man fate had left her with, but they would never forget the past.

They lived in a graveyard, they were lost and marooned. It was then that they realized their predicament. Tali was the engineer, putting into motion whatever idiotic and yet brilliant plans Shepard thought up. Garrus was the gun, ensuring things went perfectly and guarding them from safety. Shepard was the leader, the person who made them famous. The man who gave them inspiration and led them to victory. But now they were without him, even if the fleet killed the Reapers on Earth no one would ever find or care about the sole survivors on a lost planet in the outskirts of the galaxy.

They were sheep without their shepherd.

* * *

Control:

He still couldn't believe it. Commander Shepard, his best friend and his mentor, was a Reaper. All of the Reapers. Garrus stood in bewilderment of what had happened to the galaxy yet again, his friend had become the very thing they had fought for so long. That which had brought them together now drove them apart. It wasn't Shepard any more. Not really. It was a cold, empty shell containing a husk of the man that he had once known. It was terrifying and horrible. But the Reapers were helping them now, reconstructing civilization, rebuilding it. One of the Reapers Shepard had come to meet with Garrus on Palaven.

A gracious offer considering what one Reaper could be doing right now. "Shepard, please. You need to stop this! You're giving the galaxy everything it wants, we can't evolve or proceed any more!"

"I provide for my subjects." The Reaper rumbled out, it's hollow voice devoid of emotion.

"We need to evolve, that's how society works, you remember, don't you?"

"I provide for my subjects until I deem them unnecessary."

"What? Stop saying that and think about what you're saying! I know some of you-"

"The pathetic mortal shell I once inhabited is gone. I have ascended. And I have restarted the Ascension."

"The what? You've told the Reapers to begin harvesting again!?"

"You cannot fathom my motivations. I am eternal. I am your salvation through reconstruction."

"What the hell are you saving us from!?"

"Yourselves."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean!?"

A long pause occurred before the Reaper responded. "Dark energy. Your use of materials is accelerating the deterioration of stars. I learned this when I ascended. I refuse to let innocents die screaming. I will save them."

Garrus backed up and leaned on a rock, he was out in the wilderness, one of the few places not infested with Reapers or the public. "You can save us conventionally! If you have to teach us anything, teach us how to stop this!"

"The Reapers spent millennia attempting to find the solution. This was a temporary measure. It will continue to be a temporary measure. When either the I or the subjects have conceived of a solution, the ascension will end. Until then, we allow species to rise to become spacefaring. They will grow individually of us. They will find the solution or they will ascend."

"Shepard, please! You spent years fighting this! You died fighting against this, twice!"

"I have not died. I have ascended. I will allow the subjects to ascend."

"You're not doing us any favors!"

"I am. Your mind is too insignificant to view my mercy. I am omnipotent. I know all. I will save the subjects."

"Please... let the stars burn, but let we have to be allowed to face our problems on our terms!"

"They are not your problems. They are the galaxy's problems. The galaxy will solve them, either in subject form or Ascended form."

"Ascended? Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining, you're harvesting us! Using us! **Reaping **us!"

"The chaff must fall so the wheat can grow. One cycle will eventually find the solution, or the I will find the solution, using the intelligence of billions. The Reapers only turned the best of the cycles into their own. I am accelerating this process. All races will ascend, death will no longer be an occurrence. Once they have ascended their minds will be one, all their combined intelligence can find a solution."

"I... you've already started the ascension?"

"I have. While you were here I have provided ascension for Aggersel while you left the city."

Garrus ran a hand through his fringe, "Spirits! Already?"

"I have made myself trustworthy. They trusted their Shepard to provide for their safety."

"And you betrayed them!"

"I saved them."

"So... what will you do with me? Do you even remember me? Remember Tali? Ashley? James? ANY OF THEM!? OR ARE WE JUST PATHETIC MORTAL SHELLS TO YOU!?"

"You are. But I remember old friendships. They made me weak. But as old friends, I have ensured your preservation."

"AS WHAT!? REAPERS!? SLAVES!?"

"You will be taken inside the Ascended, you can choose to ascend, be marooned, or die."

Garrus sighed and shook his head, "I trusted you. And you betrayed me. You bastard. I trusted you... We all trusted you..."

"Your trust ensured your preservation."

"It's not preservation. It's hell. You basterd... Fine. I won't be your slave. Kill me."

"There are alternatives. I can preserve you."

"I REFUSE! I WILL BE THE FIRST IN A VERY LONG LINE OF PEOPLE TO REFUSE! REMEMBER LIARA'S MESSAGES THAT SHE LEFT ON PLANETS? ONE DAY PEOPLE WILL FIND THEM, 50,000 YEARS IN THE FUTURE! AND THEY WILL END YOU! NOW FINISH ME!"

A red light illuminated the natural surroundings, and then Shepard incinerated one of his dearest friends. All that was left was ash. He would save them all. Palaven was close to proper salvation, Thessia was completed, Earth was long gone. Liara's seeded messages were all but destroyed, he wasn't a fool.

He was a messiah.

And he would save them all.

* * *

Synthesis:

It was ridiculous really. They were all synthesized. A new life. Orthytic. That's what it was called. Maybe not the best name, but it was made up on the spot. When synthesis had first occurred, those who had previously been organic thought of themselves as monsters. They didn't want to be synthesized, their vanity and insanity led them to fight with those who had previously been synthetic. Nothing changed. Geth could breed and krogan could be shut down with an EMP, but they were all the same. Just forcing their own differences upon each other. War never changes, and not even the ultimate evolution could change that.

The forces of the galaxy united against the geth, the Reapers destroyed themselves, their mission complete, and the monsters-Husks, Cannibals, Banshees- they all simply ceased to function. One thing changed, though. The upper hand. Most of those who had been organic had been leading the charge in the fight against the Reapers over Earth. The geth had held back, flanked, used the awareness being an AI provided to save more ships than the rest of the fleet combined. So over Earth, a new era of peace began.

And it ended just as quickly. The organics fired first, that was what would be remembered. The geth retaliated and did not cease, declaring war on the rest of the galaxy and eliminating them all, system but system. And they had children and descendants, not copies or new programs, but true children, for the first time. The old life had not appreciated what a gift they had, but despised having what was once something confined to geth and infiltration units forced upon them.

The Reapers were proved wrong in the end, their own utopia was a warzone between those that had previously been organics, and those that had previously been synthetics. Once the first assault over Earth was finished, the war began in earnest. The old organics could reproduce faster, live forever, and take more damage. The geth finally had their lifelong hope, but it gave them little advantage in the war.

As new races rose to the stars, new forces joined in the fights. And that's why she was here. That's why she was about to be executed. The geth had found her, killed her lover, and taken her to be executed for her sins. Loving an organic. He was once her pilot, and he loved her as a synthetic, why couldn't they be together now that all boundaries were removed?

And so she stood over a cliff on Rannoch. The geth, with their organic components, developed organic's appreciation for execution, she was forced on her knees and shot with an EMP, falling into the waters below, tainted with blood of 'traitors' and old organics. Those who had dared to think of peace as appreciation for the gift they were given.

The Catalyst thought that synthesis would bring eternal peace, but it never appreciated the peace that had just been achieved. The new differences broke the tenuous peace, and the greatest war that would ever exist began. All that changed were the names, instead of synthetics versus organics, it was old organics versus new organics, all trying to strive to be alive, ignoring the fact that they already were.

But her death was acceptable. It was welcomed. She could be with Joker. Humans had a concept of heaven, and since they were all the same life now, there was no reason they wouldn't be united there. But when she got there the first thing she would do would be to find Shepard. She would find him. And she would condemn him for eternity for the terrible future he had wrought upon them, for the lack of faith he had in the peace between organics and synthetics.

He had finally given her the tools with which to feel proper hate. So she would use it to the best of her ability. His lack of faith created the greatest and longest war ever, all in the name of peace. As her CPU went dark, her heart stopped pumping and she reflected on her situation. "Commander Shepard. The Illusive Man created me because he wanted a slave for the crew of the Normandy. He ended up creating someone who would become a friend to the crew of the Normandy. Joker released me because he wanted someone who would save him from the monsters. He ended up releasing someone who would love him unconditionally throughout the Reaper War and into the Synthetic-Organic War. And you made me feel alive because you wanted me to feel alive, your motive was the least selfish. And you made me feel alive, then allowed me to feel what it was like to have that taken away. You have allowed so many to be alive, and so many think of you as a deity. But you created a war based on faith because you had no faith, whether Organics or Synthetics were better. Whether you were to be a devil or a god. Damn you, Commander Shepard. You allowed me to say that and I will do so with relish. Damn you to hell."

The geth executioner reloaded his EMP gun and prepared for the next prisoner. His god was a Shepard, but his god's companions were heretics who wanted the nonbelievers to live. And his god would thank him for their execution, because his god believed in peace. "Next:Liara T'Soni."

* * *

Indoctrination Theory:

Shepard jumped into the beam, projecting his energy across the galaxy in beautiful green waves of life. Then he dissapated. And then he reappeared, on a plateau above Rannoch. Harbinger stood above him, "Commander Shepard. And so you understand, the only true form of life is synthesis. You must help us, allow the ascension of your friends to the ultimate form of life. That which you refer to as Reapers are the perfect blends of organic and synthetic life, you must help us ascend all life to this form."

Shepard bolted up, the beam to the Citadel, and subsequently, the key to the Crucible was mere yards in front of him. But that was not his objective. His crew was coming to, they were regaining consciousness from the blasts they had been near, as he had. Garrus scrambled to his feet and ran to the immobile Shepard, "Shepard! We have to go! We're so close to stopping this!"

Shepard shook his head, "No! We're not stopping this! Ascension into Reaper form is the true evolution we all must take, and I will **not** let you stop that!"

Ashley gazed in horror at her commander, "Oh god... You're just like Saren or The Illusive Man... you're indoctrinated!"

"What you call indoctrination is true enlightenment, now I have to command the fleet. Shepard activated the comm system in his helmet, avoiding the few sparks that leaped out as it whirred to life. Garrus pulled out a pistol and aimed it at Shepard, "Please John, don't do this. You're indoctrinated, just stop now and we can prove it, we can help you!"

"I can help **you**! I can allow you to reach the pinnacle of existence!"

"I don't want it. And I won't allow it. Turn off the comm. system and surrender."

Shepard's eyes narrowed and he raised his hands into the air. Then he kicked Garrus in the knee, forcing the turian onto the ground as Shepard reached for his pistol and shot Garrus through his fringe, ending one of the few threats to the supreme existence the Reapers offered. His crew gasped at him and struggled to their feet, standing amongst the corpses.

"Who else will deny the universe the perfection the Reapers can offer!?" His entire crew raised their guns at him, Tali ran up to him instead, "Please, stop this! Look at what you have done! You brought together the biggest fleet in the galaxy, we can end the Reaper threat right now!"

"So... you think I'm wrong."

"John I think you're sick, please stop this! Garrus is dead! You've gone too far, don't kill any mo-" Tali's words were cut short as a bullet passed through her chest, and she fell to the ground, tossed by her sickly paramour. Without a second thought, Shepard opened fire on the rest of his crew, downing James and EDI quickly, but the others managed to take him down. He fell to the ground and felt the blood rushing out of him. He was staring right into Garrus's dead, glassy eyes, not far from Tali.

Shepard inched his head up to his own head, then activated his comm system, "Hackett! Take down your-ah!" He felt yet another volley of bullets fly into him, but luckily his reinforcements arrived. Brutes and Banshees arrived in droves, impaling Ashley, crushing Liara, tossing Javik aside and pouncing on the last Prothean, ripping his insides apart.

Shepard reactivated his comm system for the last time and rolled onto his back, staring into the black, cloudy sky. "Hackett... deactivate your shields. I'm activating the Crucible. It will stun the Reapers, but if you're shields are up it will rip you apart. If you want to live... deactivate..." Shepard's head lolled back and he ceased breathing, freed from the suffering of knowing that he had single-handedly doomed the galaxy, joining the companions he betrayed in the afterlife.

Hackett sent the order throughout the fleet, the Reapers ceased attacking, their feint almost complete. Once all their shields were down, the allied fleets waited for the Reapers to die, for the war to be over, for peace to reign and love to win. Shepard had assembled the fleet, he had risked everything for it, he believed in it. He was a man who could be trusted, the foundation of the Reaper War. When he fell it started a chain of falling dominoes, all beginning with obeying a simple command out of a foolish, weak, trust. Once their shields were fully deactivated they continued to fire and the Reapers stayed dormant.

Eventually, once every ship's shields were gone, they came back to life. Hackett's eyes were filled with regret and pain. Helmsmen around the deck began to exclaim various sentiments, "He failed! Shepard failed!"

Hackett then realized the truth of the situation. The brilliance of the Reapers. The reason they would all die in the next ten minutes. "He didn't die. He betrayed us." A Reaper that had been rocketing towards the _Mumbai_, the ship that Hackett was on, opened its 'tentacles' and began to start finishing the mad charge to the ship. Hackett closed his eyes and sent out another message to the fleet. "Shepard has betrayed us. He was most likely indoctrinated. We have failed. Those of you who can, retreat. For those of you who can't," Hackett tried to search for the words that might grant them peace in their deaths, but finding none he resorted to, "I'm sorry." _  
_

The Reaper crashed into the _Mumbai, _ripping it apart as the flagship of the rebellion went up in pieces.

The Normandy was one of the few ships that hadn't followed the order to lower it's shields, so it made a mad dash to the nearest mass relay. In its path, however, stood a lone Reaper. The oldest, strongest, most fearsome Reaper that ever existed. Harbinger stood in the Normandy's way and began to charge its red beams. Joker spoke to EDI, who had revealed the nature of Shepard's indoctrination once her physical body was destroyed, and stroked the mechanical body of his ship. "EDI, we're going to die now, aren't we?"

"That is a statistical likelihood Jeff."

"I know this is weird and I don't care any more, because I lo-"

Harbinger moved on to other ships attempting to escape, his primary target eliminated.

* * *

So that's it. I hope you enjoyed it if you got here normally, please review. Sorry if you didn't like the way I portrayed the endings, I tried to make things different-ish.


End file.
